Confederate Motorcycle Unveiling At Barber Racetrack

Next week's unveiling of the first Confederate motorcycle made in Birmingham at the Barber Motorsports Museum is a harbinger of the New Orleans transplant's ultimate goal of moving from Southside to Barber Motorsports Park within the next two years.

Matt Chambers, founder of Confederate Motor Co. Inc., calls the move a "no-brainer" and says he would love to see the land surrounding the park morph into an automotive corridor.



"It should be like a motorsports alley," Chambers says. "It's the perfect place for small craft houses like us to locate because there's such a braintrust of talent here on the manufacturing side. What we have to do is rally that talent together and do something out there that's relevant to what that park has to offer."

Since moving his high-end motorcycle operation to an 8,500-square-foot building on Fifth Avenue South in December, Chambers has gotten his company back on its feet in the wake of Katrina. So far, Confederate has produced eight Hellcats, which sell for an average of $67,500 each, and plans to begin production in September of its Wraith model, which sells for $55,000.

This month will be the company's most productive since moving to Birmingham, with the completion of seven bikes, says Chambers.

Wraiths, he says, are considerably less labor intensive than Hellcats, which have caught the eye of many well-known motorcycle enthusiasts, including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Once production of the Wraith cranks up in September, Confederate should average about 12 bikes per month, Chambers says. "(The Wraith) will create more business and be a little easier to manage, supply-chain wise. It has about half the part count and a third of the vendor count of the Hellcat."

Chambers, a former Baton Rouge lawyer who used earnings from several big cases to fund his dream of making motorcycles, designed the Hellcat himself. He describes it as "probably the last motor vehicle ever done that was created entirely on a drafting table with a pencil and a slide rule and all of that stuff."

He compares the Hellcat to a state-of-the art turntable and the Wraith to a state-of-the-art CD player.

"The Wraith is a purely digital - the 'kids' designed it - and it's fantastic for what it is," says Chambers. "It's a digital marvel."

Mulling over 3rd model
Confederate designers are also working on a third bike, a twin-cylinder machine that is expected to debut in 2008. Chambers says the new model will be a higher-volume bike with a lower price point.

By that time, Confederate hopes to be in a new facility at the Barber park.

Chambers says he hopes he can convince partner businesses, such as a carbon fiber manufacturer in South Africa and a machine shop in Detroit, to come to the Magic City. The Detroit vendor may be swayed to relocate to Birmingham in light of the uncertain climate surrounding the automotive industry there, Chambers says, noting that GM is the machine shop's biggest client.



"We're trying to bring in a couple of vendors who would be involved to see if they would locate next to us, and put together a little bigger package," Chambers says.

The 750-acre park is actually owned by the city of Birmingham, which leases it to the Barber Foundation, a 501c(3) nonprofit foundation. However, recently passed state legislation gives Barber more flexibility to buy some of that land from the city so it can be developed, says Don Erwin, vice president of corporate development for The Barber Companies.

Barber, which helped persuade Confederate to locate here, would love to see the motorcycle maker become a catalyst for further development.

"Our goal for the Barber park in the long run is to make it a complete destination that gives people more reasons to spend time in the area," Erwin says. "We want to have more companies that are related to automotive and motorcycles. We've done a great job with the automotive industry in the last 13 years, but we've got to get into the design part of the industry as well, and we thought that bringing in Confederate was a small first step toward that goal."

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